With motherboards based on AMD's newest AM3 socket surfacing from the likes of ECS and ASRock, market heavyweights such as ASUS have decided to pixellate their offerings on the internet. ASUS for one has two motherboards in the pipeline, under the M4A series. As the series name suggests, It's based on the AM3 socket (AM2+ was M3A) and based on AMD chipset. AM3 boards based on NVIDIA nForce chipset will be most likely called the M4N series.

Here are the initial offerings: M4A78 Pro and M4A79 Deluxe. The two are based on the AMD 780G and 790FX chipsets respectively. Both the motherboards use DDR2 memory. A complete range of AM2, AM2+ and AM3 socket CPUs are supported. Surprisingly neither support DDR3 memory, the one that makes AM3 stand apart from AM2+. The two are expected to be released in January, their prices are unknown at this point in time.

These are AM3 with DDR2 support. I was hoping these would use DDR2/DDR3 or just DDR3. Doesnt look like it. I may wind up getting one anyways just cuz its new.

Click to expand...

but what im trying to say is that there are a lot of am2+ and even some am2 boards that support am3 processor and is weird that they name a ddr2 board as am3 when they should name it am2 WITH SUPPORT for am3

I find these motherboards convenient, despite that it only supports DDR2 at the moment in the M4A or M4N family. The reason why I see it that way is because these are motherboards built for AM3, so Intel users can easily migrate to AMD processors without having to ask someone for a BIOS upgrade if unfortunate. This could also mean maximum stability too with some special features that may come with Phenom 2.

These are AM3 with DDR2 support. I was hoping these would use DDR2/DDR3 or just DDR3. Doesnt look like it. I may wind up getting one anyways just cuz its new.

Click to expand...

I was expecting the same thing. I was hoping that there would be motherboards for AM3 that would have both DDR2 and DDR3 slots, so I would have a choice of smoothly moving into the DDR3 generation with no shame once DDR3 sets the gap when keeping up with certain apps.

I'm sure there is a premium to this board like any other Asus board but seeing Realtek on it when the M3A32-MVP and the M3A79-T Deluxe use Marvell for the giga Lan and ADI Soundmax for the audio I really hope the cost will be down. It sucks ADI got out of the sound chip market cause I think they made some very good onboard sound chips.

I wish too Asus would actually change up the board alittle. It looks almost exactly like a M3A32-MVP and M3A79-T besides the SATA placement and the heatsink.

Yeah, IDE/Floppy has been dead so long they're like zombies. You can easily use a flash drive to flash any bios, and serial burners are way more convienent and are no more expensive than a modern IDE drive anyway.

Yeah, IDE/Floppy has been dead so long they're like zombies. You can easily use a flash drive to flash any bios, and serial burners are way more convienent and are no more expensive than a modern IDE drive anyway.

Click to expand...

Nearly for every BIOS, there is Windows update application. You don't have to mess with DOS BS.

Nearly for every BIOS, there is Windows update application. You don't have to mess with DOS BS.

Click to expand...

trust me, its a lot better to mess with DOS than with Windows based BIOS updates. There is much greater risk of a failed flash in Windows. For instance, Abit used to tell people up front that there is a 50% chance failure rate when using Windows flashing. That number may be different for other manufacturers but even if its a 10% chance why take the risk? Thanks but i'll pick a floppy or USB key DOS flashing any day of the week.

if you dont use them Turn them off in the bios, its just like the other IO ports on the machine, to me Optical Drives still are quick on them thats why they are still being used, that floppy port is still a good means for bios flash programs because the windows environment is connected to internet and can get stuff loaded into it that causes adverse effects to any bios flashing, where in DOS/CMD Environment it is not connected and cant be really affected by external means, and code loading is separate from the HD. Also dos is quicker for bios flashing. There is also apparently still a demand for those ports to be there, so if you dont like seeing them, either turn off the ports in the bios or just get another board, but for the rest of us this maybe an excellent solution.